Communication with home is vital to the morale of missions partners abroad. Many of them love receiving emails, checking for news on social networking sites, and talking via Skype.

However, in many countries missions partners need to protect their Christian identity. Emails are often monitored, and it has been known for visas to be revoked when a Christian’s true affiliation is discovered.

Below are some guidelines for communicating:

Do:

• Continue to communicate. It’s hard being in a CAN. There is little fellowship. Even though you can’t communicate openly, just emailing lets someone know you care.

• Be creative. Instead of using obvious Christian words which can be detected, use codewords (which I won’t detail here!) which can be worked out in advance.

• Read through any letters or emails before you send them.

Don’t:

• Mention words like mission, missionary, witnessing, conversion, evangelism, baptism, outreach, church which can be picked up easily by a spy program.

• Mention the organisation people are serving with.

• Use language that could be misunderstood e.g. spiritual warfare, battle, crusade

• Write openly about church.

• Make negative comments about the host nation or its government.

• Mention the name of the country or city they are in, or use a codeword.

• Display newsletters, photos or information about their work on church noticeboards or the internet.

• Forward newsletters without permission.

REMEMBER: CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES!

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